Ryan on the other hand already had a female companion to go home to, Sarah Reilly, a GP that he’d met on a case fourteen months before, and the thought of her curling up soft and warm on their sofa and enjoying a marathon fest of Game of Thrones without him wasn’t in any way being compensated for by the honey tinted liquid in his glass.
He was just about to say as much when Aidan gave an unexpected groan. “I’m fed up being fit.”
Given that they were boozing and lounging and nowhere near a gym at that moment it seemed a curious non sequitur, but the sergeant decided to bite. He set his heavy glass tumbler down and nodded the D.C.I. on.
“OK, shoot. Why are you fed up being fit? It must be great to be able to leap over tall buildings in one bound.”
Aidan shook his blond head gloomily; averting his gaze from his associate and fixing it instead on the dancing flames of the bar’s open fire.
“Not really. First, once you get fit you spend all your bloody time working to maintain it, and second, I’m only doing it because I’ve nothing better to do on nights and weekends.”
Ryan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Confessions of strong emotions like anger and frustration he was used to from men, but having one of his bosses basically telling him how lonely he was, not as an aside or joke, and in a captive environment where they were stuck together for at least another day, was something that he wasn’t at all sure about.
It was the sight of the chief inspector’s heavy-jawed face falling further that convinced Ryan that it was time to transcend decades of conditioning and their rank difference, and step up and be a mate.
He sat forward with his hands clasped between his knees and girded himself to ask a personal question that he knew would either earn him a friend for life or a metaphorical kick in the balls. This was Ireland after all, still a palpably macho country, and they were in one of its most macho occupations, the police. Such discussions rarely occurred, but what the hell.
“How lo...”
His voice tailed away uncertainly, and then after a short pause he cleared his throat and tried again, this time managing to get his intended question out.
“How long has it been since you had a serious relationship?”
As the question hit the air the D.S. recoiled so hard in shock at his own boldness that he was thankful he hadn’t chosen a stool to sit on or he’d have fallen off.
As it happened Ryan needn’t have worried about any backlash from Aidan because when he pulled his gaze away from the flames there was nothing but sadness written there. As he answered the question it was joined by obvious grief.
“I was engaged once, eight years ago, but...”
He returned to the firelight again.
A surprised but emboldened Ryan decided to push him on it. He’d never heard the D.C.I. speak of any woman being important to him, and would have characterised his romantic life as a serious of futile chat-ups and short, mostly physical trysts. Perhaps his ignorance came from only been on the team for a year and the others all knew about this ex-fiancée, but somehow he thought not.
“What...what was her name?”
“Arela.”
“That’s lovely.”
He meant it; he’d always loved Celtic names, especially the girls’. They had a romance about them.
Aidan nodded sadly. “So was she. She was the gentlest woman that I’d ever met.”
Ryan was dreading the next question but knew that it needed to be asked. “Why did you split up?”
He braced himself for a tale of selfishness or infidelity, or even a more mundane one such as she hadn’t liked the way the brash detective had held his knife. But what came next was far worse, and strangely its seriousness elevated the D.C.I. in his opinion, although he wasn’t quite sure why.
“She died.”
Aidan went to say more but no words emerged. But what could they possibly have been except, “I loved her”, which was obvious, or the name of the bastard or illness that had ended her life? And why would he have wanted those painful details to hit the air when they must have done so a thousand times when her death occurred.
The sergeant opened his mouth to say something, anything, more; but what words would be useful? What words could possibly help? In the end he said, “I’m sorry” anyway, because he was and because the sound that the sentiment made was something to fill the pause.
It wasn’t much of a pause because Aidan shook his head briskly, ending the discussion as suddenly as he’d begun it but with a lifetime of loss expressed in between.
Just at that moment a young waiter appeared in front of them, but without a bottle or tray but with a note in his hand it was clear that he hadn’t come to serve. He held the piece of paper in the air for a moment, passing it to Aidan on the sergeant’s glance. The solemn D.C.I. took it and nodded the youth away, then straightening up his seat like the professional he was he paraphrased the message aloud.
“It’s from the station sergeant in Rownton. Some girl has approached the local newspaper about Derek Morrow. They’re running a story about the two of them having had an affair in tomorrow’s early edition and she’s being interviewed on local radio in the morning as well.”
Ryan exhaled noisily. “Aw, hell. Morrow’s wife won’t like that.”
Aidan rose to his feet. “I’d say that was an understatement.”
The sergeant gazed up at him. “Are you going somewhere?”
“We’re going back to Rownton. We need to find out more about this young woman before the shit hits the fan.”
Ryan glanced meaningfully through the bar’s latticed windows to where a gale was blowing a tree outside almost horizontal, and then he looked back longingly at the glowing fire.
“It can’t wait till tomorrow?”
A re-energised Aidan was already signing for their drinks. “No, it can’t. I want to get in front of this before things blow up in the morning and the Guv reams us out for not being ahead of the game.”
His companion rose reluctantly. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting? Man has affair and affair goes wrong so he tops himself. It sounds common enough to me, so what’s it got to do with our case?”
Aidan took out his car-keys, threw them up in the air and caught them before answering the question with one in return.
“How often does a suicide happen within hours of a dead body being found in the same tiny village? Outside an Agatha Christie novel that is. And then it’s always suspicious.”
Ryan conceded the point reluctantly, his gaze back on the bent tree again. “Well...OK, probably not often.”
Aidan snorted, back to his usual bombastic self. “Probably? Catch a grip, man; you’re letting the fire melt your brain...”
As he turned for the car park exit Ryan shuddered, anticipating the freezing air when it opened.
“...if the suicide Vic and this girl aren’t linked to our murder case somehow I’ll eat my tie.”
The chilly sergeant wondered sourly whether it would have the same effect as a protein shake.
****
Rownton Police Station.9 p.m.
It didn’t take the detectives long to reach Rownton Station and even less time to locate the editor of the local newspaper, The Rownton Recorder, who conveniently owned the cottage next door to the nick. He also kept chickens in a small holding behind it, thereby double-jobbing as the local source of free-range eggs.
The newspaper man awaited them in the station’s reception wearing a practiced look of determination on his strangely gnarled face, which later enquiries would reveal was the product of too many youthful punch-ups in scrums during the local rugby sevens’ tournaments and a reluctance to seek medical help.
Thankfully the journalist was holding a pen and notepad instead of one of his chickens when they met so his hands were covered in ink instead of the less fragrant alternative, but whichever occupational hat the man was wearing he didn’t seem like the sort to co-operate.
“Would you like to give my paper
a statement on the body found in the quarry, Chief Inspector? And why you’re harassing local citizens?”
Aidan gave the man a scowl that said he would be taking no lip.
“You’re here to answer questions, not ask them.”
The editor spat back. “You can forget that! I’m only here as a courtesy because Mickey here asked me and we went to school together.”
The forty-something Sergeant ‘Mickey Here’ O’Hare confirmed the words with a nod, from his position of sentinel, standing cross-armed behind the station’s high reception desk.
“Well, more insisted than asked. Be fair, Hal.”
‘Hal’ ignored the adjustment.
“I’m only here to get a quote from you lot about the stiff in the quarry, not to give you anything on my story.”
The statement pissed Aidan off so much that he took a stride forward, closing the gap between him and the short editor in one step.
“What’s your name, sir? Hal what?”
It was something that both the barman’s note and Mickey Here had failed to reveal, but either Aidan’s height or his long stride took the journalist aback so much that he blurted out, “Hector McDonagh but they call me Hal” and then tutted at having squealed on himself.
“Well, Mister McDonagh, we won’t be giving you any comments, but you will be giving us some if you want to sleep in your own bed tonight. Now, we can either do things here in the cold reception, or I’m sure Sergeant O’Hare has a nice warm interview room,” he glanced meaningfully at the custody officer, “and some nice warm drinks to boot.”
Refusal from either man wasn’t an option, as Aidan’s rank ensured the room and drinks and both detectives’ forward progress ensured that the journalist either moved in the direction they wished or he would get knocked over on to the floor.
Five minutes later the station’s front door had been locked and its bell for emergencies highlighted, and all four men were squeezed into a tiny interview room with a ratio of three to one on opposite sides of the table and the solitary figure of Hector McDonagh, journalist and chicken farmer, now looking distinctly perturbed.
Aidan kicked off the proceedings.
“Now, Mister McDonagh, tell us about this young lady who approached both you and the local radio station. What’s her name?”
McDonagh tried for defiance. “Buy a paper tomorrow and you’ll see.”
Ryan wondered whether Aidan would explode but instead the D.C.I. merely rolled his eyes.
“Really? You’re honestly thinking of withholding information from the Murder Squad?”
The editor’s eyes grew round. “Murder? But the man just drowned!” The eyes narrowed again as McDonagh sensed a scoop. “Didn’t he?”
Aidan gave him a knowing look. “You’ll have to find out that answer from The Belfast Chronicle, won’t you?”
Ryan suppressed a smirk, seeing where he was going. Dangling a bigger story in front of the journalist if he played ball might get him to loosen his lips about the girl.
The journalist lurched forward. “I want the murder story!”
Aidan gave him a look that a head teacher would have been proud of. “You can want all you like, sir, but what reason would we have to agree?”
“Because the public-”
He was cut off by the D.C.I. raising his palm.
“Please don’t give me that old ‘the public have a right to know’ guff. I’ve heard it quoted by bigger and better hacks than you and it’s rarely been their true motivation. Filling column inches is all you’re interested in. So, go on...” he held out his hand in a beckoning gesture, “persuade me to speak to my boss and arrange for you to be the first to get whatever story emerges once things have played out.”
Ryan added, “Give it your best shot” eliciting a smile from Michael O’Hare.
He’d known Hal McDonagh for years but the detectives had only just met him, and yet they’d spotted the man’s voracious ambition straight away; although to be fair it was a characteristic often found in journalists so it wasn’t something they were likely to get much credit for.
All the cops could tell the gamble was about to pay off when McDonagh began chewing his bottom lip.
Whether it was the rhythmic tapping of Ryan’s forefinger on the table, or the soaring heat in a windowless room crammed with four people when it had only been designed to hold two, but the chewing intensified so much that the only way for McDonagh to proceed if he wanted to keep his lips from bleeding was to agree to the offer.
He did so eventually with a grudging, “Oh, for God’s sake, OK!”
Aidan leaned across the table and stared directly into his eyes.
“You’ll give us her name and contacts, and you’ll remove the article from tomorrow’s paper.”
McDonagh’s eyes became saucers. “Remove it? But that’ll leave me with half a page-”
Ryan cut in quickly. “That I’m sure you can fill with something else you already have prepared.”
His boss nodded and went on. “The deal’s only good if neither she nor Derek Morrow are mentioned anywhere in your paper. Understand?”
After a few seconds more frowning there was an angry grunt. It was followed immediately by, “But she’ll be on the radio at ten.”
Aidan rested slowly back in his chair. “Let us worry about that.”
He nodded the custody sergeant to find something to write on.
“Now, write down where she is and the name of the radio show and you’ll be free to go and change your front page.”
As the detectives rose to their feet the journalist glared up at them. “You’d better not renege on this.”
Ryan could see Aidan thinking, “Or what?”
But the D.C.I. had the diplomatic sense not to say it out loud, simply nod at the pen and paper now in front of the editor.
“Give it to Sergeant O’Hare when you’ve finished and then take yourself off home.”
Ryan glanced at the wall clock and sighed. It was almost ten o’clock. With a trip to wherever Morrow’s mistress was located and a visit to the radio jock still to pay, they’d be lucky if they got to bed that night before it was time to get up again.
Chapter Five
Dublin. Thursday, 8 a.m.
“STUPID BASTARD!”
Róisín Casey hissed the words so loudly that her office door flew open and her concerned looking PA rushed in.
“Are you OK, Ms Casey? I thought I heard you call out.”
The motherly secretary received no response but a rapidly waving hand shooing her out again, the banker’s other one already on a mobile phone. As the door closed behind the woman Róisín dialled a number, her previously shooing hand drumming her desk hard as she waited for the other end to be picked up. As soon as it was she repeated her expletive, adding, in her sharper childhood vernacular,
“I give you one soddin’ jab, Arthur, an’ you can’t even feckin’ manage that!”
Arthur Norris had anticipated her anger before he’d taken the call, his online newsfeed from The Rownton Recorder showing him what Róisín Casey had already learnt twenty minutes before, that there was nothing in the newspaper’s early edition about Derek Morrow or his supposed mistress.
As the elderly businessman opened his mouth to answer, the banker cut him off with,
“How much did you pay her? Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough!”
When he heard her inhale for long enough to signal that it was a respite and not preparation for a new assault Norris answered, as quietly and calmly as she had been frantic and loud.
“I paid her well and she agreed to everything, Róisín. I know she gave the local news editor an exclusive interview because she told me that he’d promised to make it his front page. I also booked her a slot on the local radio at ten this morning, so even if the journalist did drop the ball, people will hear her then and the message will get across and spread.”
A quieter, but somehow even more terrifying for that, voice responded. “She’d bett
er be on the radio at ten, Arthur, because if she’s not someone’s head is going to roll. Get your ass down to Rownton and find out exactly what happened to that bloody front page, and get it reinstated, now!”
The phone went down before Arthur Norris even got a chance to attempt obsequiousness; at least that was something he had to be thankful for.
****
The C.C.U. Thursday, 8 a.m.
True to his word Craig was in his office at eight o’clock ready to brief, having managed a decent night’s sleep the night before because Katy had, which meant that their offspring must have done as well. That had prompted a moment of anxiety about the baby’s lack of movement when they’d woken at seven, until its first well aimed kick at Katy’s ribs had reassured them that all was well.
But even though the detective was fairly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed he hadn’t had time for breakfast, so when his deputy dandered into his office at a minute past the hour with a bacon butty in his hand he almost leapt over his desk to yank it out. Liam spotted the coming assault and shoved the roll in his mouth hastily, fairly certain that Craig was too fastidious to want it after that.
When his boss still came hurtling towards him he became less sure, until Craig yanked his office door open and disappeared off the floor, reappearing five minutes later with a butty of his own and his junior analyst in tow.
“Right, take a seat, Ash. Liam clearly already has. Has Davy told you want we need?”
The dark-eyed analyst nodded, making his gold earring wobble and Liam make a comment that showed not only his lack of tact but his lack of fashion nous.
“What is it with you young ones, always drilling holes and drawing on yourselves? Could you not just scribble on some paper instead?”
Ash shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about the drawing part because I don’t have any tattoos, but my earring’s a national style thing. You know, something I got from my Hindu warrior ancestors, like my winning smile. ” He glanced at the D.C.I.’s shoes. “Just like your lot probably had giant feet.”
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